Tales of Downfall and Rebirth (46 page)

Platforms had been built above the bow of all the Cypriot ships, and Foscari could see smoke drifting downwind from each enemy forecastle.

That meant each of Spiridon's ships carried Greek fire, jellied gasoline from the fuel tanks of cars and boats stranded by the Change. Jellied gasoline worked well enough in firebombs lobbed by catapults or hurled like grenades, but if you were going to squirt the stuff from a siphon, you had to warm it up first and turn it liquid, and so each gasoline tank rested over a carefully controlled fire.

“Are they themselves attacking?” Foscari turned at the sound of Serafina's voice—she'd dashed down from the citadel on word of the enemy approach.

“I myself don't think so,” Foscari replied in
Venexiàn
. “They themselves can't get in, and I'm not myself going out.”

“They'd pick off your ships as they cleared the breakwater.”

“If they themselves had any sense,” Foscari said, “that's what they'd do. But I myself don't know how sensible their admiral is, since he blew himself all the way up here in a gale, half his men at least are going to be seasick, and he's going to have a hell of a time getting home rowing straight into the wind.”

Serafina raised binoculars to her eyes. “They themselves are keeping formation well enough.”

“Well enough,” Foscari admitted. “Can you yourself tell if they're roped together?”

She seemed surprised. “They themselves are too far apart, aren't they?”

“They could themselves use long hawsers.”

Serafina peered through his glasses. “But why?”

“To keep us from getting in between them.”

It's what he would have done if he were the Cypriot admiral, lashed every vessel together and turned any action into a land battle, where superiority of numbers would give him an advantage.

The Afentiko, called away from a meeting inland, arrived a few minutes later, out of breath from his run along the mole. The enemy fleet paraded past the walls, turned neatly in succession, and paraded back the way it had come. Then one ship—the largest, with three banks of oars—turned and made across the gray swells toward the harbor entrance. White flags blossomed from its forecastle.

“A parley,” the Afentiko said, in mild surprise.

There was another surprise when the galley came to a halt just short of Fort St. Nicholas, and a man with a big voice called out from the bow.

“We want a parley with the Venetian commander!”

Foscari looked at the Afentiko and shrugged. “With your permission? We might learn something.”

The Afentiko returned his shrug. “If you like.”

King Spiridon's envoy was a woman, a rangy, green-eyed creature in her thirties who stalked like a leopard onto the quay, dressed in olive-green suede pantaloons, a chain-mail byrnie so brilliantly polished that she seemed clad in silver, and a steel cap. She carried a curved saber at her waist, and identified herself as Colonel Chadova.

No one wanted to take Chadova through the walled city to inspect the defenses, so she and her two aides were escorted by a double line of Venetian marines to the old town hall, a gray, bunkerlike Brutalist building on the waterfront now used mainly for storage. Foscari had a word with the marine lieutenant beforehand about what was expected, and so the envoy and his two aides were made to surrender their weapons, then thoroughly searched, before being allowed into the presence of Foscari and the Afentiko.

The Afentiko said the room had been used for “press conferences,” whatever those were, but in any case it was well lit by the tall windows overlooking the water, and once stored furniture had been shifted to the side, and a pair of thronelike chairs set up for the allies, there was a clear space for both the marines and the envoys. Serafina stood quietly in the corner, watching with cautious eyes. Behind her was an old carving of an ancient coin, a godlike face crowned with the proud motto Demos Rodion, the People of Rhodes.

Colonel Chadova padded into the room with a dancer's glide, lithe and purposeful, a performance directed at her audience of two. Her silver chain mail rippled. Her green eyes looked out from beneath dark hair accented by a white streak. She looked first at the Afentiko—Foscari sensed Kanellis' muscles tense, as if he was under threat—and then the eyes slowly turned to Foscari, and he felt the almost physical impact of that stare, a sense that his entire being was being read, as if he were the text of an inferior recipe and Chadova a masterful and scornful cook. His heart gave a sudden lurch, and he felt the hairs on his nape rise. He tried to force his body to relax, not to give himself away as had Kanellis.

“You are the Venetian?” she asked in Greek.

With effort, Foscari held her gaze. “I am Ammiraglio Foscari,” he said.

The green gaze shifted again to the Afentiko. “I did not ask Loukas Kanellis to this conference,” she said.

“Anything you can say to me, you can say in front of him.” Foscari ground his teeth at the hash his inexpert Greek made of this complicated idea, but Colonel Chadova seemed to understand him well enough. The emerald eyes turned again to Foscari.

“Perhaps it is news to you that Lindos has fallen,” she said, and Foscari felt the Afentiko stir on his chair.

“The acropolis was taken the morning after our landing,” Chadova continued. “I myself led one of the storming parties.” Satisfaction curled the corners of her mouth. “The defenders were killed to the last, for the crime of defying His Majesty King Spiridon.”

The Afentiko took a moment to recover from the surprise, and when he spoke, his voice had deepened with anger.

“Your king will pay for this atrocity.”

Colonel Chadova didn't even bother to look at Kanellis. “When His Majesty Spiridon is crowned King of Rhodes in your Grand Master's Palace,” she said, “you may then repeat that threat.”

Now her green eyes finally turned to the Afentiko, and they glittered with menace. “I can promise that you will still be alive at that point, though perhaps you may not be . . . entirely intact.”

Foscari sensed that Kanellis was about to unleash an angry retort, and saw no point in letting the conference degenerate into a pointless exchange of threats.

“Colonel Chadova,” he said quickly. “I believe you carry a message for me?”

Chadova's amusement was almost palpable. She turned back to Foscari.

“I beg your pardon, Ammiraglio,” she said. “I intend merely to point out your situation. Lindos has fallen, and as the army of Spiridon is superior to the local militia, the City of Rhodes will fall. Our fleet outnumbers yours, and you have no hope of a victory at sea. If you continue in a futile effort to support the Kanellis regime, you will inevitably fail, and your life will be forfeit.”

She paused for a moment to gauge Foscari's reaction. He hoped he managed to keep his face immobile under her unsettling gaze.

“It is your misfortune to be matched against an invincible leader,” she said, “one given dominion by the Powers of Land, of Sea, and of Air.”

Foscari smiled thinly. The only Power of the Sea that he recognized was the Republic of Venice.

“Powers of Air?” he said. “Does your king intend to fly here?”

Her eyes flashed. “Were you to confront the Powers directly—were you to be so unlucky as to meet Them—you would not mock.”

Foscari allowed skepticism to drift across his face. Chadova watched for a long, intense moment, then returned to her subject.

“We offer you an honorable alternative to a pointless death,” she said. “If you agree to sail your ships through the Corinth Canal to Corfu, we will permit you to leave peacefully.”

Foscari had expected something of this sort. “You wish me to abandon the alliance formally contracted between Rhodes and the Venetian Republic?”

“I offer an alternative to your own extinction,” Chadova said. “Why not take it?”

“Because the choice is not mine. I am a soldier and a servant of the Republic. I can neither create nor abandon policy. That is the function of the Council and its President.”

He touched a finger to the corner of his mustache and caught a surprised look on the face of his marine lieutenant. “My duty requires that I decline your kind offer, Colonel.”

Chadova lifted an eyebrow. “This is your decision? You will die for your ridiculous republic, and sacrifice all those who depend on you?”

“Perhaps I won't be the one who's sacrificed,” Foscari said. “Venice has many more ships than those you see here.”

“When we capture your squadron, we will nearly double the size of our fleet.”

Which tells me something of your plans,
Foscari thought. Again he touched his mustache, a signal to the marine lieutenant.

“Unless you have a more sensible proposal, Colonel,” he said, “I believe our parley is at an end.”

“You will die,” Chadova said.

“So will you, madame,” he said. “So will everyone.”

The important thing, Foscari thought, was not death, but the life that preceded it, ideally a life in service to an ideal. An ideal such as the Maritime Republic, which guaranteed peace and order and prosperity wherever its ships rode the water, and which provided poor children like young Giustinian Foscari a chance to rise in service to the State, rise at a time when so many others were dying of starvation, of banditry, of war . . .

Colonel Chadova's last words were for the Afentiko. “The Powers will burn your sad little kingdom to ashes,” she said, and turned to go.

Foscari looked at the marine lieutenant and gave a nod, this time a more explicit instruction. The lieutenant stepped behind Chadova, put his hand on his short saber, half drew it, and hesitated.

He had probably never attacked treacherously before. Very likely he had never had to kill a woman. Possibly he had never killed anyone at all.

The hesitation was the lieutenant's undoing. Chadova sensed his intention and acted instantly—she took a step rearward, her leg between his, and as she turned banged him with a hip to unbalance him . . . She reached for the lieutenant's short saber, and snatched it from his hand and drew from the scabbard all in the same motion.

Foscari shoved his chair back and reached for his cutlass as the lieutenant reeled back from a pair of cuts to his head. Everyone else in the room was frozen in surprise—the Afentiko was partly turned away, looking by his chair for a briefcase full of papers and reports, and probably had only the vaguest idea what had just happened.

Chadova's burning green eyes swung to the Afentiko, and the reddened sword swept upward, poised for another cut as she charged.

“For God's sake kill them!” Foscari shouted into the surprised room.

Chadova was already arrowing for the Afentiko, who only now turned and realized his danger. Foscari's heart thundered in his ears. He lunged forward with his cutlass and knocked Chadova's sword up, but she kept going, ducking under both blades and lashing out with a boot to kick the Afentiko in the face, knocking him back into his chair just as he was trying to stand. The chair swayed, threatened to tip . . .

Foscari kept moving forward and knocked Chadova bodily back, out of range of the Afentiko . . . and then she seemed to turn into a whirlwind of steel, the sword appearing to come at Foscari from everywhere at once. Her emerald eyes were ablaze, seeing straight through Foscari to the Afentiko he protected, and her face appeared to become almost translucent, as if she wore a mask and now her true self was revealed, a feral, unholy being of burning energy that radiated through her translucent skin.

Foscari gave way under Chadova's attack, barely able to parry the blade that seemed to whip at him from every angle. Chadova's attacks were strong beyond reason, and Foscari felt every impact all the way to his shoulder. With each strike Foscari's hand grew more numb from the repeated impacts. Terror tangled in his nerves as he feared that soon his sword would fall from nerveless fingers.

One of the marines saved him, lunging at Chadova from behind with a boarding pike and piercing the polished chain-mail coat. She barely registered the thrust, her snarling expression unchanged, but there was a slight hesitation in her next attack, and Foscari was able to parry it and make a cut on her arm. The cut seemed to do nothing: her riposte was so fast that Foscari had to make a leap backward to avoid being skewered.

His back heel came up against the Afentiko's chair. He could retreat no farther.

The marine made another thrust with his pike, and this time put more weight behind it, so that Chadova was forced to take a staggering step away from her prey—she might possess unnatural strength and speed, but the marine was heavier than she, and physics still worked. Foscari slashed again with his cutlass, and this time he felt the right ulna crack under the weight of his blade.

Chadova's sword dropped from her useless right hand, but in a move so fast that Foscari saw only a blur, she snatched the hilt from the air with her left and turned away from Foscari to sweep it in a long arc behind her, catching the marine in the knee. He gave a yelp and fell heavily, and Chadova whirled again to bat Foscari's next thrust aside.

Foscari tasted blood and fear. More marines charged into the fight, armed with boarding pikes or with cutlasses and target shields. Chadova gave a shriek as she fought them, not a cry of fear but a scream of rage that left the Venetians half stunned. A far-from-human light burned in her eyes.

There was a wild chaos of slashing blades. Foscari's own attacks flailed empty air. One of the marines staggered back with a wound to the throat that spurted red, another jerked back a hand missing two fingers. But two more pikes drove through the polished chain mail, and Foscari hacked into the melee and felt an impact as he slashed through Chadova's wrist.

A third pike struck home, and three strong young men put their weight onto the shafts and bore the wildly flailing woman to the floor. A swarm of Venetians surrounded the body and pierced and hacked in a frenzy of inept and desperate butchery. Blood sprayed and filled the air with its coppery scent.